Question: Today I am unable to ask even for my own correction, so how can I ask for the entire world?

Answer: To ask for oneself or for the world is the same thing. Suppose you don’t have enough air. But we all have to breathe, so if others don’t have it, I won’t have it either, and if there is air, it will be for all. It cannot be sliced.

It’s impossible to ask for an individual correction since correction is based precisely on our unification. One can’t ask the Light for oneself because the Light is a universal force of bestowal that dwells between us. If I am an element of an electrical network, how can I ask for the current to pass only through me? It cannot reach me if it doesn’t pass through the entire network.

This should help us comprehend the nature of the global, integrated world which we are beginning to feel now. You can’t ask anything for yourself; it won’t help. If you keep trying to isolate yourself, you will only draw greater blows upon yourself.

Your plea for yourself, your protectionism, “separatism” will help you only in realizing your evil. You will be forced to admit that you are asking incorrectly! And how can this knowledge be passed onto you except by blows? The more you pray about your own well-being, the more you will be beaten until you learn that you can’t ask only for yourself.

You will see that not only does it not help, but it also brings an opposite result. At some point you will realize that fulfillment can be only collective. And if everybody doesn’t receive it, then you won’t get it either for you are the last one in line for it!

Understand what the Creator wants to teach you. And the sooner you will grasp it, the better. After all, if He has to use a number of blows to show you your place in the very end of this chain, how long are you willing to suffer? You’d better learn it fast so you can start living accordingly.

Granted, right now it seems absolutely unreal and undesirable to you. But on the other hand, there is no choice: You will have to come to the same conclusion anyway. So try whatever you may to fool your egoism and run ahead of the blows by asking for the correction of all at least artificially.

During the lesson, let’s ask the Light to come and give us this experience, understanding, direction,and a minimal aspiration for this goal. Let’s do it for pragmatic reasons at least, in order to avoid the blows. After all, everyone receives fulfillment last.
[33500]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: If all that is needed from the creatures is preparation, what principle does it bring into our work?

Answer: All work is done by the Creator; everything comes from Above, and nothing is up to the Kelim (vessels, desires) except for the cooperative preparation of their attitude to the Giver, to the Creator. Everyone exists together with other souls, with all other created beings and the Creator, the Source. This is the only way we should prepare ourselves.

The principle is very simple. We have to discuss it over and over again, think about it, play with it so that we process it better and better in our desires and thoughts. The vital moment here is to use the environment: We strive to establish interconnection, unite as equals with each other. And as soon as we reveal even a drop of this connection, we will immediately be able to establish a connection with the Creator, the Giver. This is what our first spiritual step will be.

Afterwards, having bonded even tighter, we will enter the second rung of connection with the Creator. And so forth at each new step: In the degree of our bond with each other we construct the Kli, the vessel, fit to receive the Creator’s abundance. In our interconnection, we build the intention to bestow to Him.

So it follows that the key is in the environment, the group, the adhesion with mutual intention, according to the principle of, “Israel, the Torah and the Creator are one.” “Israel” is individual souls, desires, that despite their egoism strive to bond with each other and to become equal, unified, as one man with one heart, in mutual guarantee, in love of others as they love themselves. Thereby, we present the Giver with an opportunity to bestow to us; we bring Him our intention: to receive in order to bestow pleasure to Him.

We are as first blood brothers who unify before their mother. She cannot bestow to each of us separately, only to all of us together. Her love is one for all.
[33565]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is the role of the environment in our work against our nature?

Answer: The environment strengthens a person and provides him with a place to express himself, to do the necessary actions. It’s a place where he receives support and solidarity, the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif), and the impressions along the way. The environment is everything.

Nobody receives anything directly from the Creator. We are interconnected within a single system where everyone has his place, like cells in a body, and everyone receives nourishment from this common body. And the life flowing through it is the common force of bestowal, the Creator.

Take our organism for example. It contains three levels of development: the still, vegetative, and animate. And at the same time, with a proper operation which surpasses their own existence they beget a new life: desires, thoughts, passions, feelings, attainment, and understanding. The body lives, and this allows an awareness of life to manifest over it.

Technically, the organism also continues working when I lose consciousness. But I no longer continue being a person in the full sense of that word; I become disconnected from human life.

So, right now our common body operates one way or another; it is complete, but the reciprocity of its parts is only realized on the still, vegetative, and animate levels. This is our world. But the human level, the degree of similarity to the Creator is missing; it is not revealed. And we need to develop it.

We only discover it when we ourselves activate our body with the purpose of establishing a connection with bestowal, the Light, the consciousness that we refer to as the “Creator.” We need to activate all our cells as is, but we also must add the intention to them: the purpose of life.

When we add an intention over the life we now live, we enter the human degree. Then due to this preparation, the Creator becomes revealed to this desire, to this intention that has been added. He becomes revealed in the desire of the human (Adam) within us.

The human manifests in us only under the condition that we unite among us as we understand and realize that the reason we are doing it is the Creator. We want to reveal Him, and He wants to endow us with bestowal.
[33553]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: In a few days I will come to the convention where I will meet people whom I have never seen before, who speak different languages, and belong to other cultures. What do I have to convey to them and what do I have to receive from them in order to hold on to the thread that leads into spirituality?

Answer: You have to give each other mutual support, the understanding that if we inspire each other, then we will attain the goal. Don’t count on the Creator or some “kind God.” We see that the whole world cries out to Him, but did this ever help anybody? You can only turn to the group.

When you turn to the group and desire to reveal love and unity among all of you, that will mean that you have revealed the Creator. The Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, or the Temple is the common Kli, the common soul of the group, the nation, or the whole world. It is our unification. The Creator does not exist outside of the creatures. He is called the Creator (Boreh) because you reveal Him (“Come and See,”  Bo–Reh) inside of the common, integral, connected Kli or desire.

With this intention I come to the group or travel to the convention where I want to tell everyone, “Guys, do we want to reveal the Creator? Then where can we see Him? Where is our unity!? How does each one of us inspire and get inspired by the unity between us, meaning from the Creator, from spirituality? Can every person receive such a force from our common unification that he will fortify himself and become included back in it even stronger!?”

This will mean that we have made contact with the Creator. The Creator is our common force, the force that consolidates us!

Say there are ten of us and each one has a force of 100 pounds. Do you think that we have a common force of 100×10, meaning 1000 pounds? That is not so. Because we have united together and canceled our ego in order to come closer and unite, instead of a thousand pounds of force, we have received a million! That’s because we worked against egoism, against hatred for others, and have attained love for everyone. This effort had to go somewhere. We didn’t just add or sum up our pounds because we had to exert a great amount of effort to achieve this.

Suppose we are collecting money for some shared activity in dissemination. I don’t just throw money into the common pot, but I work against my ego and various calculations. If I simply spent that money, I wouldn’t even notice it. But I cannot force myself to pay it to the group, to the common affair. Anything but this! I am ready to burn it, to spend it so tomorrow I won’t even remember where it went, yet I will know that I still did something for my own enjoyment.

But when I give money to the group, it costs me 100 times more, so it’s as if I’m not giving $500, but $50,000! That’s the kind of effort I make. Therefore, if unification is created for the sake of revealing the Creator, mutual bestowal, then inside of it I reveal enormous forces. This isn’t just us “pitching in” to the common fund because besides our personal contributions that fund contains one more additional, “consolidating” component.

There is one more “bonus” or addition to the account whose might is a billion times greater than the sum of the contributions. This is the force that each person receives from the group because it divides into everyone, but does not get any smaller!

That is why we get together at conventions and other meetings: in order to extract that common, “consolidating” component. Each one of us receives it for himself, for his own correction.
[33698]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: What is a group?

Answer: A group is the desire of each one of us to find oneself united with others and the Creator. It is written: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” A group is those who strive to connect with one another for the purpose of revealing the force that fills them in this connection.

“I” is my spiritual movement ahead; it is just this movement, nothing else counts. My “I” can be egoistic, set against: “I do not want to connect,” or on the contrary: “I want to connect.” I only take this into consideration.

A group is all the others who want to be together with the same movements, even though they could possibly be set against. And here we are trying to do this together in order to reveal the Creator in our desire, according to the law of the equivalence of form.

We can never reveal Him any other way, but only as the property that we will create between us. This “tool” of ours will elicit what is happening outside of us. We are creating a detector that discovers the Creator to the extent of the sensitivity that we have attained between us.
[33196]
From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: How do we accelerate our advancement?

Answer: It is very difficult. I know through my own experience. I think the only possibility is through luck

. The mind does not work here, and nothing will help. Here, what is needed is called “good fortune” or luck, “Mazal” in Hebrew.

Or more simply, cancel yourself, turn yourself into a small cogwheel, a mechanism within the group: “I will do everything like my friends say; I do everything they want, with less of my own thoughts.” Take some kind of work and perform it automatically, without activating your feelings or thoughts, just invest yourself in it, and cling to your friends. That helps.

But overall, it is very difficult. Properly incorporating yourself in the group is the passport to success. You do not need anything else. Once you tune yourself into the group, you discover that it is completely corrected, that all the worlds exist in it, and the Creator is inside it.

Your friends do not even feel this, but once you cancel yourself in relation to them, you begin to discover it among them. And suddenly you see: “Holy smoke, where am I? Our world turns out to be the world of Infinity? Where did all the negativity go? There is none of it here! Everything is beautiful, in absolute perfection.”

This is how you see the world once you correct yourself. This is why in Hebrew “world” is “Olam,” from the word “Nehelam” (disappearing). It is relative. Just like the theory of relativity, everything depends on the “user,” the observer.
[33199]
From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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The Zohar, Introduction, Article “Two Points,” Item 121: This is why the forces of separation are called “locks,” since they block the gates of approaching and drive us away from the Creator. But if we overcome them so they do not affect us, cooling His love from our hearts, the locks become doors, the darkness becomes light, and the bitter becomes sweet.

Question: What does it mean, “cooling His love from our hearts?”

Answer: If a person initially prepares himself for the fact that he plans to acquire love for the Creator, meaning for the quality of bestowal to become loved, accepted, and desirable to him so that he will feel the quality of bestowal that comes to him as a great value and reward for all the efforts he made, that means he prepares himself for the right actions.

Then by virtue of the right preparation, he looks differently at all the disturbances that seem to come in order to cool him down, to push him away from love for the Creator, from coming closer to the quality of bestowal. He views them as help because precisely by overcoming them he becomes stronger, more understanding, braver, and more learned, and through the greater understanding, sensations, and strength he ascends to the quality of bestowal.

For example, if I want to be physically strong, then all of my work with weights, jumping, and running is training for me that will enable me to become stronger. Everything depends on the preparation. If I don’t desire to be strong, if this does not worry me, then any obstacle that arises on my path will deprive me of the desire to advance. I will circumvent it and not be happy that it has come.

Do I see the obstacles as help sent to me from Above in order to make me grow and raise me to the Creator’s level, or not? This depends on my aspiration, preparation, and the support from the environment. This is the only way that we can advance.

Everything depends on the preparation. Before I open up a book, come to the group, start studying or thinking about anything, I have to ask the question, “Why am I doing this? And what should I be thinking about?” The only thing I should think about is how to make a calculation according to the analysis “true versus false,” rather than the sensations, “sweet versus bitter.” Then I immediately try to build my discernments based on the analysis, “true versus false.” And if that is so, then I at least know that I am not there, I don’t want it, and so on. Yet I nevertheless discern the truth: Who am I right now, and what is happening inside of me and outside of me?

This is necessary! In this regard everything depends on the environment, or the preparation from the surrounding environment. A grain cannot grow unless the environment provides it with everything it needs to grow. By itself it will simply dry up. There has to be an environment that awakens a person and works on him.

Imagine that you are in an environment where everyone aspires to be physically strong. Then you learn from them and together with them participate in all of the training. They jump and lift weights from morning until night! Why? Because that is their goal. And you start doing the same thing whether you want it or not because you receive the importance of the goal from them. You see every obstacle, every weight that you have to lift, every exercise you have to make as an opportunity given to you for growth. That’s all. There is no other opportunity.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/11, The Zohar

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Question: Why did the authors of The Zohar write using very earthly language in some places, which only confuses us, as if it is talking about our world, and in other places they wrote using the language of Partzufim and Sefirot?

Answer: The language that was created as far back as Adam HaRishon contains several Segulot (miraculous qualities). Why are they Segulot? It’s because we do not understand what the spiritual world is. We do not attain it and cannot imagine it correctly. We cannot formulate any of it before ourselves in any form.

It is initially clear that all of our notions, even ones of this world, are totally false. Like blind people, we are all trying to advance by feeling our way around, not knowing what we come up against and what is happening. All of our reminiscences and imaginary pictures are incorrect and false.

We are in such a dark state that we have never tasted the taste of truth. Not even a weak ray of Light has ever penetrated into this pitch darkness in order to even slightly illuminate any details of the world in which we exist, as well as the connections between us.

That’s why a question arises: Is it possible to speak to these creatures at all? It’s even worse than digging up worms in the ground and trying to tell them the Torah. That is not a joke! The difference between us and the spiritual world is much bigger than between us, living creatures, and a worm in the ground, which is also a living creature.

You differ from the worm by the size of your awareness and cognizance in the same darkness where you both exist. However, you and a person who is in spirituality are separated by opposite perception—an abyss that is impossible to even imagine.

Adam HaRishon was the first person who revealed the fact that besides our state, there is a source, the spiritual world, the true reality, whereas we are in total darkness, like worms in the ground who have never crawled to the outside and do not know that a different world even exists. Therefore, we have to be given at least the end of a rope that we could grab onto.

Thus, those who attain spirituality starting from Adam HaRishon invented what seems like all sorts of stories. However, they are not stories, but a system connecting us to the world and the souls that attain spirituality, to the connection between them and the Light that is in them.

Right now we have no idea what is the meaning of any of these words—not about that world, nor about the souls, nor the connection, nor the Light—nothing! Yet they traced a certain connection from the state which is unknown to us, and we have no idea what that connection is either. But they did it in order to somehow connect that state to us. And if we use that connection by following their advice, it gradually influences us.

Therefore, it’s absolutely irrelevant to ask why they wrote using one kind of language or another: one that’s more sensitive or rational, one that’s clearer or less clear. We can only get confused by the descriptions that seem more earthly and closer to us.

There is only one opportunity to come closer to The Zohar: to connect with one another as much as possible. To the degree we unite through efforts to be above our ego, we give these spiritual states the opportunity to be revealed. But as long as they aren’t revealed, we will not find out what they are. It is written, “I saw a reverse world.” You will see that the spiritual world is completely not what you were able to imagine.
[33580]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/11, The Zohar

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Question: If the environment doesn’t convince me that bestowal is good and enjoyable, I will never achieve it. However, on the other hand, if I don’t seek bestowal, the environment won’t desire it. How do we break free from this vicious circle?

Answer: We should agree to play a game with each other. Rabash writes about it in his articles about the group and its purpose. Nobody arrived here with a ready-made desire to unite with the others, but we decided that we wished to act that way.

You are complaining that it’s impossible to advance without desire, but if you did have it, you would advance egoistically, in this material world. However, how do you advance transcending this egoistic desire? You need to rise above it, and that is why we make a pact in our environment that we value bestowal above reception.

We understand how it works in theory, but in reality we don’t feel it. Hence, we need to play the game of bestowal which is described as, “I labored and found.” We pretend that the goal is extremely important to us, even though in truth we don’t see any importance in it. We are not deceiving ourselves. We admit it, but say that it doesn’t bother us.

I am immersed in my egoism in this world, but in order to raise myself to the next rung, to ascend into the upper world, I play this game with the friends as if it is vitally important for us to reach this future world, the degree of Bina, love and bestowal. If everyone before me pretends that it is important, I will accept is as truth. Otherwise, we will remain in our ego forever. If I don’t force values upon myself that are more exalted than the ones I have today and don’t accept them above reason, I will never achieve them.

If the environment constantly plays like this for me, this game will eventually become my second nature. However, you don’t want to play it. Instead, do you wish to remain “honest,” without corrupting your heart? Since there is nothing else in the heart except egoism, that’s where you will be stuck!

Yes, I admit that there is only egoism in my heart, but I pretend in order to be above it. I can’t order my heart to feel differently, but I wish to receive a new heart, a different one. Now, I act as if I don’t have this egoistic heart, as if I stepped out of it and started to treat everything solely with bestowal.

I rise above everything I have within. There is some savage being living inside me with whom I don’t wish to deal anymore. Let him suffer there inside me, but I, myself, am moving into another system, another body. The environment will affect me and so will the upper Light. However, I have to pressure myself so I may come to it! I don’t want to hear any arguments; I don’t let such people even come close to me.

We must agree that all of us together are sort of playing, working, for each other. If I don’t do my duty, I weaken everybody, and the harm that returns to me increases manifold. Therefore, I should not fear to meet the conditions of mutual guarantee; otherwise, I will suffer immensely. Arvut (mutual guarantee) is a horrible weapon, a double-edged sword.
[32797]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/10, Baal HaSulam, Letter No.13

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Question: Sages said that we should expect salvation from the Creator every day, but how do I keep this hype up so as to always feel as if I am about to get a revelation and not let go?

Answer: You should make this anticipation pleasant. A person can think about pleasant things all the time. However, if you get tired of thinking about it, it means you don’t take pleasure in it.

We are made of the desire to enjoy, and if we are enjoying something, we strive for it. If not, we try to get rid of it. Hence, we should do our best to make our thoughts about the revelation of the Creator and the spiritual world sweet and delightful. Then, we won’t be able to stop thinking about it.

I have to constantly tell myself that it brings a fulfillment that will compensate for everything I lack. It will satiate all my desires, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. Spiritual revelation is the answer to everything. Then, I won’t forget about it, but always desire it instead. This thought will constantly haunt me in the background of everything else.

If thinking about spirituality is a heavy duty for me, it will certainly take a tremendous effort. However, it isn’t a job. It has to be enjoyable, like a “salve for an exhausted soul.”

After all, you have never before felt the love of friends as a sweet spiritual fulfillment. You simply enjoyed spending time with them. However, imagine that it will bring you to some very exalted, incredibly enjoyable, and fulfilling experience, to an indescribable feeling of peacefulness that you have never felt before, as if you were in tranquil, gentle waters, and then you will start yearning for it.

Obviously, for now, it is an egoistic aspiration, Lo Lishma (not for Her Name), and you simply seek pleasure. However, it still will allow you remain in this thought and, simultaneously, you will start discerning truth and lies, advancing thereby.
[32800]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/10, Baal HaSulam, Letter No.13

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